Finding the right neutral

Now that might sound odd but a neutral tone is still a tone and you need the right tones to make something work just as you envisage. 

I had intended to take some of my Chorley Material (link to an explanation of Chorley material ) and make postage stamp style panels, then join them up and see what size it reached and go from there to whatever happened.

So strips cut from the fabric squares, sewn together, cut into strips (of squares) and sewn together.

I was tootling along OK then something was just off, with the number of strips and the lengths. Must have cut one of the strips just that bit thinner, making the block from that set shorted. 

A bit muddled about the best way to proceed I paused, with four  sets of large blocks finished a couple of sets of four strips sewn together and several single strips. 

Sometimes when a project decides to assert its individuality and desire to be uniquely different from what I had planned the project and I need a bit of a time out.

With one thing and another that was quite a long pause this time and was only ended due to a combination of things.  A trip to the loft to look for a picture frame in the stash of frames was not in itself successful, but as I was up there anyway a bit of material stash sorting happened, and as oft is the case I came across a bag with bits and thought the weight of a large piece of mostly cream (with a green line leave pattern on it) might go with the Chorley blocks and perhaps work to get me back on track.

Down it came and was spread out on my equivalent of a design wall (top of a double bed) and the blocks and strips laid on top to get a feel for them together. 

It was a no go, it just was not working, I did have what I felt was a nice arrangement for the Chorley bits but not with the loft material.  It needed a plain material in a neutral shade. Alas I did not have that to hand and thought there was going to be another long pause.

However, the very next day I popped into a charity shop (suitably masked of course and hand sanitiser at the door) and spotted a curtain, just the one but it looked to be big enough even disregarding a patterned bit at the top,(click here to see what happened to the patterned top) the right weight of material possibly the right colour (although without a bit of the other fabric with me this was a leap of faith). And bonus it was lined (lining is always good, depending on the quality it can be lining for bags or the base for an embroidery  test material for dye pens oh lots of things. 

I bought it, unpicked it, cut off the patterned bit and back to the design bed.....this was going to work.  I did have to do a bit of unpicking and sewing on the Chorley blocks to get them to size.  With a few little bits left over which are destined for the current bits a quilt

The result of finding the right neutral on this occasion.

Now I could just say get this laid out and with a bit of contortion may even be able to get it sandwiched, but not feeling in a contortionist mood and I have yet to decide on a quilting plan.  Always much easier to put the quilting plan onto the top before sandwiching.  So it will once more wait however, I have at least the material for the backing and binding picked out, going to use a dusty lime green.